Rutherford memorial lecture, 1977. Some episodes of the α-particle story, 1903-1977

Abstract

For the fifth time, since the series was inaugurated in the University of New Zealand at Christchurch, a quarter of a century ago, in the place where Rutherford embarked on that amazing career in experimental research, relying only on his own instinct - and on the genius that, in the short space of five years, was to bring him a professorship in this great country on the other side of the world - the Royal Society Memorial Lecture comes to Canada. I deem it a great privilege to be chosen as your lecturer today. Although, almost to the day, forty years have now passed since Ernest Rutherford died, I can claim to have worked under his general direction, and in the end as his junior colleague, during the last eleven years of his life, with only two breaks of a year each in other appointments.